Multiple Regression and Statistical Computing - Professional Development Course

Overview

The course will develop the knowledge and skills learnt in Introductory Biostatistics for situations where the linear relationship between a continuous outcome variable and several continuous or categorical predictor variables is being investigated.

It lays the foundation for more advanced biostatistical subjects such as Categorical Data Analysis (where the outcome variable is categorical) and Survival Analysis (where the outcome variable represents time until an event).

Each topic is covered by a 1 hour statistics lecture, a 1 hour SAS lecture, a 1 hour SAS practical and a 1 hour statistics tutorial to discuss the interpretation of the results. Each fortnight there is an exercise on the material covered in the statistics lecture.

The SAS practical allows the necessary computing to answer the questions for the statistics tutorial the following week.

The assignments will involve practical analysis and interpretation of a data set and between 10% and 20% of the marks for each assignment are for the SAS computing program.

Course aims

At the end of this unit students will be able to:

Recognise when multiple linear regression techniques would be appropriate.

Interpret the results of a multiple regression analysis.

Understand the key concepts of confounding and effect modification, how to test for them and how to analyse data in their presence.

Use the principles of multiple regression to best analyse a set of data, depending on the research question.

Conduct a multiple regression analysis using the SAS software package.